Keep Moving (15 page)

1956

Elvis Presley hit it big. I never understood him. I was not a fan of the music. In fact, before Elvis took rock ‘n’ roll to a new popularity, Bill Haley had his own early rock ‘n’ roll hits with “Rock Around the Clock” and “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” and I felt the same way about his music. Years later I was in a coffee shop, and he came up to my table and introduced himself. He was a nice man. I jokingly said, “I don’t know whether to shake your hand or punch you.” Those songs weren’t music to me. As far as I was concerned, they ruined everything.
D

1957

I saw Mike Nichols and Elaine May perform at Town Hall in New York City, and to this day it remains the most brilliant comedy performance I have seen onstage. In what I remember as the final sketch, they started out
as two kids playing house. As it progressed and they grew up and became adults, their dialogue got harsher, until Nichols and May were in a fight. Stagehands came out and separated them. Those of us in the audience thought, “Oh my God, they lost it.” Then suddenly they turned and bowed. It was brilliant.
A

1960

Nixon and Kennedy ran against each other in the presidential election. I had voted for Ike, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and I thought he did a good job. But I didn’t consider myself a Republican. I watched the Nixon-Kennedy debate on television. I thought Kennedy won hands down. I was surprised when a number of people I knew who had listened to the debate on the radio thought the opposite, that Nixon had been the clear winner. I was a fan of Kennedy. I was taken in by the Camelot Era; it was both smart and glamorous or glamorous and smart. I thought he was a good president.
A

1961

The Dick Van Dyke Show
premiered. I got a week off from
Bye Bye Birdie
to do the pilot. I was such a nervous wreck that I had four fever blisters. But the writing made it a cakewalk! The pilot went unbelievably well. The show wasn’t a hit right away. We were up against the
Perry Como Show,
and my name didn’t mean anything. We got canceled at the end of the season. But summer reruns helped, and Sheldon went to Proctor and Gamble and
convinced them to stick with it. He said the show was too good to cancel. He was right.

We took off in season two, and though we only did five seasons, thanks to syndication the show has rarely been off the air. Why has it held up? Carl had a rule: No references to current events, no slang, nothing that would date it.

It also had to be real.

He would tell the writers, “I don’t care how ridiculous a situation is as long as it could really happen. It has to be believable.” And, of course, above all else, the shows were funny.
A

1963

President Kennedy was assassinated. I was doing
The Dick Van Dyke Show.
I was at work that day, November 22. I walked in from lunch and saw the assistant director, John Chulay, standing in front of the television, with tears streaming down his face. He turned and said, “Kennedy was shot.” I had to record an album that night,
Songs I Like, by Dick Van Dyke.
We’d already rented the studio; the musicians in the orchestra cried the entire night. It was so tragic.
F

1963–1964

Color TV became the new standard. Although a handful of shows were broadcast in color in the fifties, color TV was not widely available until the early sixties. The network approached Carl Reiner about doing
The Dick Van
Dyke Show
in color, but we stayed in black and white. Around this same time I bought my family’s first color TV, an RCA. But I began seeing movies that shouldn’t have been in color, such as
Citizen Kane
and
The Magnificent Ambersons.
It took a while before the industry appreciated that those were so beautiful in black and white.
A

1964

With four children, including two girls, Beatlemania hit hard in our house. I am pretty sure the Beatles’ Sunday night appearance on the
Ed Sullivan Show
was must-see TV for all of us, including me. Unlike Elvis and Bill Haley, I was impressed by the group’s musicality. They were more sophisticated than anyone else. The next month my daughters, Carrie Beth and Stacy, were with me in England, where I was working on
Mary Poppins,
and we crossed paths with the Fab Four at Twickenham Studios.

We were working on the “Jolly Holiday” number, and John, Paul, George, and Ringo were finishing
A Hard Day’s Night.
They invited all of us to a party, and we had a great time. But here’s the best part: months later we were at a fundraiser somewhere, a garden party, and they came up to my daughters and said, “Hi, Stacy. Hi, Carrie. How are you?”

My daughters were blown away that the Beatles remembered their names. They probably still haven’t gotten over it. The guys were nice young men, and I thought their music was very good.
A

Mary Poppins
was released. I knew this was a special project the day Walt Disney first showed me all the scenes beautifully painted as storyboards. They were tacked to the wall. It was like being in an art gallery. Then I sat and listened to the Sherman brothers play the score. That cinched it. I knew I had to be in that movie. Looking back, the magic was the music and Walt’s touch. He just had it. There was a great spirit the whole time we made it, and I think it shows onscreen.
A+

1965

On March 25 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led thousands of civil rights demonstrators on a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. This followed a terrible display a few weeks earlier when police beat marchers as they attempted to peacefully cross the bridge on their way to the state capitol. The violence had been televised. Americans had seen peaceful citizens bloodied by police. That the demonstrators were black and the police white made it even uglier.

In the interim Dr. King urged religious leaders of all faiths to join his march. I wanted to go. A year earlier I had attended a rally at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum where Dr. King spoke. I had lived in Atlanta as a younger man and had seen—and in fact been shocked and disturbed by—the way black people were treated. I thought it was important to go to Selma. But
The Dick Van Dyke Show
was in production, and the studio wouldn’t shut it down. But I give Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement an
A.

1969

Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. I was glued to the TV the whole time. In addition to the image of Armstrong climbing out of the lunar module, the other thing I can still picture is CBS anchor Walter Cronkite counting down the touchdown and then finally taking off his glasses and shaking his head in amazement. He was wiped out, as we all were, though I also remember thinking that the whole thing was a fake. Some people believed that it was all acted out in a soundstage. It reminded me of when I was a kid and the disappointment I felt when I learned there were no aliens on the moon.
A

1971

The New Dick Van Dyke Show
premiered. I reunited with Carl Reiner on this new CBS sitcom, which costarred Hope Lange as my wife. It was a solid show, but it never took off because viewers wouldn’t accept me with another woman. One day a lady came up to me in the supermarket, hit me with her purse, and said, “How could you leave that wonderful Laura?” I learned a lesson: thou shall not cheat—even on your TV wife.
B

1972

Watergate consumed the country in so many ways. Among the most serious and long-lasting harm—at least to me—was the sense of mistrust the incident seemed to ignite in all aspects of American life. It was a wake-up call: What do you mean we can’t trust the president?
What do you mean he ordered a break-in? In 1974, two years after the break-in was uncovered, Nixon resigned. We are still paying a price.
F

1975

With the fall of Saigon, the Vietnam War finally ended, and it was many years too late, as far as I was concerned. I was against the war from the beginning. I thought it was based on paranoia. Just like the Korean conflict, we didn’t manage to do anything in Vietnam except lose a lot of lives. We got out by the skin of our teeth, as evidenced by those indelible images of Americans being hastily evacuated from rooftops as the North Vietnamese took over the southern capital.
F

1980

Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States. I thought back to when I first met him in the early 1960s. Actor Don DeFore was a neighbor of mine, and he invited my wife, Margie, and me to a dinner party. It was Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, Ron and Nancy, and my wife and I. We were the only liberals at the table. But I kept my mouth shut. Ron talked that night about getting rid of the unions and the right-to-work issue. A short time later he served two terms as California’s governor. Five years later he ran for president of the United States and was elected twice to what was, without question, his greatest role. Even though we differed politically, as a fellow actor, I will respectfully give him top marks:
A

1984

The Summer Olympics were in Los Angeles, and I went for the whole thing. As a former track guy (I was a high jumper and ran the 220 in high school; I never had the stamina for the 440), I loved it. The city came together; it was a two-week celebration and showed the potential for people from all over to get along.
A

1990

In February Nelson Mandela was released from jail after being in prison for thirty years. Four years later he was elected president of South Africa, the first black president in that country’s history. Apartheid ended, and it seemed like a victory for the entire world. But I remember seeing Mandela on the news around then and noticing the look in his eyes. It was full of character and strength and, impressively, a depth of humanity that I had seen before—in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It was the kind of look that gave me faith that right does eventually triumph.
A

1993

Diagnosis Murder
premiered. As I mentioned earlier, producer Fred Silverman wanted me to star in a spinoff from
Jake and the Fatman.
“Freddy, I’m ninety-five years old. I can’t do an hour series,” I said. In truth, I was sixty-five, but I thought I was done.

He said, “Just do the spinoff. Then you don’t have to do anything.”

I did, and then one movie of the week turned into three movies of the week, and so on, and that went on for ten years. It wasn’t a cool show, but I did push the fact that there was no violence and no bad language. And as I worked well into my seventies, I think I helped show that older folks are still employable. For that reason alone:
A

2001

September 11. Terrorists attacked the United States in New York City, Washington DC, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It’s one of those days that none of us will ever forget. I woke up, turned on the television, and saw the World Trade Center on fire. Like everyone else, I had trouble comprehending what I saw, especially when the second plane crashed into the building and then the towers fell . . . it was incredible in the sense that I didn’t believe something like that could be real. It was like a movie. But it was real, and it brought back memories of the bombings of London in 1939 and the kamikaze pilots in World War II who were willing to die. The world is still feeling the impact of those attacks.
F

2008

Barack Obama won the election for the forty-fourth president of the United States, becoming the country’s first black president. I never ever thought I would see that in my lifetime. I thought I might see flying cars before I saw the first black president. But regardless of opinions about
his performance, his election, like his campaign slogan, “Hope,” made the future look much brighter.
A

2014

Same-sex marriage became legal in about two-thirds of the country. By the end of the year thirty-five states allowed same-sex marriage, which I think is more than good—it’s inevitable. I remember in the sixties and seventies, when people thought the institution was dead. I guess people were wrong. If one thing is clear from the dawn of human history, nothing is more powerful than love. Love is here to stay.
A

COMMENTS

Like every era of history, the years I have witnessed have been filled with all kinds of violence, prejudice, and stupidity, and yet every day someone is born who will discover a vaccine, invent new technology, write a song, find a peaceful way to battle injustice, conquer ignorance, and make a decision that will keep us human beings moving forward. How do I know? I have seen it happen. So as I think about a time when I will no longer be around to see what happens next, I have hope that future generations will continue to do better, to keep us moving in the direction where every generation will have the nourishment of hope.

Let’s Hear It for Neighborliness
Let’s Hear It for Neighborliness

Recently Arlene and I went out to dinner in Beverly Hills and then saw Jane Lynch in her one-woman show. The next morning I realized I had lost my wallet. Here is the letter to the editor of our local newspaper I wrote a few days after my wallet mysteriously turned up in a neighbor’s yard.

I moved to Malibu in 1986 when I was sixty-one years old. I’m closing in on ninety now. It’s been a beautiful three decades, and I think it’s time I expressed a little appreciation. As the years have piled on, some of my faculties began taking a hike: you know, misplacing the car key, my glasses, grocery lists—that sort of thing.

Once, I dropped my wallet on the sidewalk in front of the bank. Before I could miss it, a call came from the restaurant next door, Marmalade. Someone had dropped it off, knowing I go there a lot. I believe Ralph’s Supermarket keeps a special drawer for the collection of credit cards I leave there on a regular basis, always neatly bound up in a rubber band.

Last week a good neighbor called to say she found my wallet in her front yard. How did it get over there? She didn’t know. I don’t know. None of us will ever know. But it got back to me.

Short of a nursing home, this neighborhood is the closest there is to assisted living I could get. Thanks to you all for looking after me so well.

When you get over the hill, I will do the same for you.

What a town!